Great Christmas Organizer App For A Stress-Free Holiday!

There’s a lot of hustle and bustle that goes into the Christmas season, and if you don’t have a well organized plan of action for the days leading up to Christmas, the season can leave you feeling a lot like the Grinch. But thankfully, there’s an app for that. First Time Christmas is a “first ever” Christmas organizer app to specifically help you with your holiday planning, party planning, gift giving, decorating ideas and more this holiday season.

This comprehensive Christmas organizer app should relieve a lot of Christmas stress due to its overall plan that pulls all your holiday related tasks into one location…your iPhone. With this iPhone Productivity app you can easily plan your tasks, organize all the details, and never miss a task on your scheduled list. All your holiday planning starts with 4 main categories: Action Dates, Activities, Master List, and Helpful Tips. And believe it or not, this Christmas organizer app starts planning 6 months in advance with deciding where you and your family will be spending the holidays, as well as purchasing plane tickets and arranging hotels. There are even “to dos” that extend 1-2 weeks beyond Christmas with simple reminders like tossing out the live tree and filing donation receipts for tax purposes.

Under the Action Dates category, you will find 11 time periods listed (3-6 months before Christmas, 2 months, 6 weeks, 1 month, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and 1 to 2 weeks after Christmas). Each of these 11 time periods has a checklist that can be marked off one at a time as you complete each or all at once. This Christmas organizer app also gives you the option to add your own custom tasks to a list. Custom entries can be added in both the Action Dates and Activities category areas.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to edit or delete a task once you’ve added it. And unfortunately, there’s no way to drag and rearrange the ordered list of tasks either. But, one nice feature when adding custom entries is that you can set reminder dates and add them to your iCalendar to receive reminder alerts on specific dates and times. This will help to keep you right on track when the busyness of the season really kicks in. You can also email any of these task lists to whomever you need, and these lists display in a nice bulleted list form that shows what has been completed and what still needs to be done.

The main Activities category in this Christmas planning app comes with 7 subcategories that give you helpful time schedules for a lot of important areas, from big overall details to the smallest ones that you could easily miss in the chaotic fever of the season. These categories are: Decorating, Entertaining and Parties, Food & Drink, Gift Giving and Cards, Other (Miscellaneous), Volunteering and Family Traditions, and After Christmas.

One of my favorite features is the Master List category because it provides you with 7 different and well put together lists templates that you can add to (a Christmas party list, menu planner, grocery list, gift list, drink list, cleaning list, and card list). These lists can be emailed or printed off. What I love about these individual list templates is that each includes at least 1 helpful example entry to get you started. Example: The Master Christmas Holiday Menu Planner shows Christmas Breakfast including champagne mimosas and cinnamon rolls, as well as entry to find and wash champagne glasses and find a recipe for the rolls. Obviously, the rest is up to you to fill in.

The Helpful Tips category in this Christmas app is pretty good and covers the same 7 categories as the Activities category with simple, interesting and thoughtful suggestions that will help make your life easier or help you repurpose worn items, as well as remember small details that a thoughtful person or hostess would want to remember to do. Here are 2 First Time Christmas suggestions for after Christmas: if you add a gift to your re-gifting bin, make sure to tag it with the name of the person who originally gave it to you so as not to cause hurt feelings or awkward moments in the future. And, if you usually toss your Christmas cards each year, why not cut them up instead and use as gift tags for next year? And as a bonus, this Christmas organizer app includes a Traditions/Facts category for some fun international Christmas trivia. Interestingly, according to this app many people in Japan eat Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) as their traditional Christmas dinner. Who would have thought?

Overall, I think First Time Christmas is a great Christmas organizer app. This app has a very smooth and user-friendly interface and a festive and attractive design that makes it a pleasure to use. This iPhone Productivity app might even be an answered prayer for some people, especially all you type A personalities. So whether you’re “Dreaming of a White Christmas” this year or a stress-free holiday, the First Time Christmas app might be the app to make one of those dreams come true.

Lisa Vallez - (Mrs. CrazyMike) is the Co-Founder of CrazyMikesapps.com, as well as the Editor and an Author, among other things. She is also a wife and mother of three teens. Lisa likes to write reviews for apps that appeal to the average everyday family, especially Education, Kids, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Productivity and many other app categories.